


A Very Divisive Colour

by Charamei



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 05:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charamei/pseuds/Charamei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Time Lords rule the universe and Daleks are freedom fighters. Dalek Freda gets stuck babysitting Davros' pet renegade Time Lord, the Doctor, and before she knows it he's saved her life and uncovered her greatest secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Divisive Colour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guardingdark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardingdark/gifts).



The slave pits on Firagi Minor are notorious, noxious, and no more. Freda stands among piles of ashes that used to be Time Lords, watching the slaves file out into the sunlight. She can tell by the expressions of wonder that some of them have never seen it before.

Something flickers on one of her sensors. She wheels around, training her eye on the huddled, hooded shape that's trying to slip past among a group of humans. "HALT! TIME LORD!"

The slaves around him scatter, looking nervously at one another as though trying to identify the nonhuman. The Time Lord merely sighs and turns to face her, brushing his hood away from his face. He's short for a Time Lord, with dark, curly hair and blue eyes. And much too clean to be a mere human slave.

"Now listen, I know what this looks like, but I assure you it's not," he says. Freda lets him talk while she sends a message to her squad leader. Does Command want him alive? If he was hiding among the slaves, he may be a spy. "Believe it or not, I was actually here trying to do what you did – to help these people."

"TIME LORDS DO NOT HELP SLAVES," Freda says. Hurry _up_ , Command. Her scanners aren't showing any weapons on him, but that doesn't mean much. Time Lord technology has always outstripped Dalek.

"Not as a rule, no, although I think you'll find I'm the exception to it. I like your bow, by the way. Very fetching. Really sets off the eyestalk."

The bow is pink and was given to Freda by a small human she once saved from the mind probe, so this does not help his case as much as he might like. Nevertheless, she has to admit it's good to be appreciated.

Command sends back a request for more information. That's unusual, she thinks.

"I-DENT-IF-Y YOUR-SELF, TIME LORD."

"Ah, yes, of course. I'm the Doctor. And you would be?"

"THE DOC-TOR," Freda says, sending the information back to Command. She's heard the name before, somewhere. But where?

"No, no, _I'm_ the Doctor. We can't both be the Doctor, otherwise we really won't know whether we're coming or going. Unless, of course, you're just repeating everything I say, which, I think –"

Her internal communicator blinks as the new message comes through. Priority one. Straight from the top. Interesting.

"I AM FRE-DA," Freda says, and shoots him. Command may have just told her they wanted him alive, but they never specified conscious. And he really is very grating.

/\/\/\

He's the most wanted criminal in the universe, a Time Lord gone rogue and seemingly willing to topple his own civilisation if it means saving others'. _That's_ where she'd heard the name before: in whispers bandied between the races of the Skaro Resistance.

Freda had always assumed that such a Time Lord was a myth, a legend created by slaves to bring hope. Yet here he stands, between the Emperor and Davros, a Time Lord dressed like a human.

Still arguing like a Time Lord, though.

"No – I've told you before, I can't. I'm sorry, Davros, truly I am, but I can't."

"TIME TRA-VEL COULD WIN THE WAR," The Emperor snaps. "YOUR KNOW-LEDGE COULD WIN THE WAR."

"Ah, but it's _not_ a war, is it? And I've no desire for it to become one. So, no."

"YOU ARE A TRAI-TOR TO THE CAUSE!"

"Oh, shut up, you idiot," Davros says, without taking his eyes from the Doctor. "If he were betraying us, the Time Lords would have arrived by now." He sighs and settles back in his chair. "I continue to hope that you change your mind one day, Doctor."

"Yes, well, don't hold on to that hope too tightly. Of course if there's anything _else_ I can help you with – something that's actually within my power to grant, that wouldn't result in us starting a Time War –?"

There is a moment of quiet while the leaders confer over their internal comms. Then Davros says, "You'll need backup."

/\/\/\

"NO-BO-DY MEN-TIONED THAT YOU COULD NOT PI-LOT THIS THING."

"Sssh, ssh, ssh, almost there," the Doctor says, which makes Freda want to shoot him again. How did she end up babysitting Davros' pet Time Lord? "I don't suppose you could grab that lever – oh, no, I suppose you can't. You see, this is why I usually travel with humans. Much more useful shapes."

"AL-SO MUCH MORE LIKE TIME LORDS," Freda points out, and applies her brakes as the TARDIS lurches unpleasantly to one side again. "I CAN SHOOT YOU."

"Yes, I'd rather you didn't… there! A perfect landing."

Something goes _crunch_. The Doctor glances at the scanner, winces, then flips a switch. "A _nearly_ perfect landing."

"LET'S JUST GET THIS O-VER WITH," Freda grumbles, and rolls her way out of the TARDIS.

/\/\/\

They are not on the right planet. They are on an exceptionally wet, _boggy_ planet, which drains Freda's elevation thrusters as she struggles to not sink in the mud and gets wet grass stuck in all her axles. The Doctor meanwhile prances about in the rain like a human child, laughing and jumping and _splashing_.

When the thunder starts, Freda gives up entirely and hurries back to the TARDIS before her systems get fried by lightning. The idiot arrives back shortly thereafter, covered in mud with an enormous grin on his face.

"YOU ARE A MESS AND WE HAVE WAS-TED TIME."

"I was having _fun_. What's the point of it all if you can't do that occasionally, hmm?"

"ON-LY A TIME LORD CAN AF-FORD NOT TO CARE," Freda says sourly, and goes to continue picking the grass out of her wheels.

She takes a left instead of a right on the way back to her room and ends up in the one place she never wanted to go.

"Ah, you've found the wardrobe. Not much that'll fit a Dalek in here, I'm afraid."

And with the idiot, too. Freda swivels her eyestalk around to look at him: he's clean now, washed and dressed. Either he has the universe's most efficient dry-cleaning or he owns a lot of identical coats.

"HAVE YOU EV-ER BEEN A WO-MAN?"

"No. No, I've been male in every incarnation so far."

"YOU HAVE A LOT OF DRESS-ES FOR SOME-ONE WHO HAS NEV-ER BEEN A WO-MAN."

"Well, my companions are often women. And you know how these things accumulate over the centuries..."

Freda swivels her eyestalk back around, once again taking in the array of silks, velvets and colours before her. Something deep in her core aches in a way she would never dare to describe. "THEY ARE BEAU-TI-FUL."

There's a moment of tense, pensive silence.

"Ah," the Doctor says. "I have to admit, I did wonder about the bow. I didn't like to ask."

"THERE IS NO-THING WRONG WITH WANT-ING TO BE PRE-TTY."

"Of course not. It's looking quite bedraggled, I'm afraid. Would you like me to put it in the wash for you? I can find you a new one in the meantime."

"WE HAVE A MI-SSION TO COM-PLETE."

"So we do," the Doctor says with a slight sigh. "Come on, then. Race you back to the console room."

"THAT IS NOT FAIR. MY THRUS-TERS HAVE NOT FUL-LY RE-CHARGED."

He just grins at her and runs off. Freda says a very rude word, and follows.

/\/\/\

Breaking into top-secret Time Lord weapons research space stations is surprisingly easy when one has a TARDIS. Freda deploys her cloak and trundles along in the shadows, following the Doctor as he wanders airily through the corridors without a care in the world.

Shouldn't he be hiding too? He is their most wanted criminal, after all. What if he's a double agent? It would hardly be the first time, although usually it's humans who for some reason are content to live as slaves to a race that will never consider them equals –

She's so lost in thought that she doesn't notice the Dalek trap in the floor until she rolls right over it. She shudders to a standstill as its power surges up her casing, shutting down her systems, cutting her comms, hacking the door – _no not the door_ – cold, stiff air hisses onto her body, her _real_ body, and the Doctor is nowhere to be seen. The lying, cowardly, two-faced _Time Lord scum_.

Hands reach for her. She jumps, wraps herself around the guard's neck, tries to force her body over his mouth and nose – but there are three of them, and three is _too many_ , and they pull her off and she lands on the floor and _no, no, no, not the boot, anything but the boot_ –

Daleks don't have much in the way of pain receptors. She feels it all the same. And, to her astonishment, she carries on feeling it.

She feels it as they push her casing away to dissect the latest Dalek technology. She feels it as they tramp past her, looking for the intruders. She slowly, painfully scuttles to the edge of the corridor, peers up at the fuzzy signs above her and begins to inch her way back to the TARDIS. If she's lucky, she can hide out there until he goes back to Davros.

If she's _really_ lucky, she might even be alive when they get there.

From down a side corridor, there's yelling. Familiar yelling. Yelling she last heard telling her about the wonders of rain, although now it sounds rather more angry and less like a child fed on sugar pills. She needs the Doctor to get back into the TARDIS and away from here, so she changes direction. Maybe she can hide in his pocket. Moving is getting hard.

He's being held by the same two guards she had her encounter with earlier: the third has a staser trained on the Doctor's head. Oh. Not a double agent after all, then?

"– a fine, upstanding woman who cared more for this universe than you will ever understand. _And you trod on her_! You couldn't even give her the dignity of killing her like the fully sentient being she was."

He's holding something close against his chest, inside his jacket. The tablet? Does he have the plans after all? And he's shouting…

Nobody's ever shouted like that about Freda before. Especially not while in imminent danger of death.

She gathers the last of her strength and jumps, scrabbling at the collar of her attempted murderer until she slips down the back of his neck. He jerks, drops his staser, begins slapping at himself to get her off, but she keeps moving, shoving tentacles under armpits and into trousers, wishing she could just _kill him_. Someone grabs her and this time she _knows_ it's all over, but she's wrong, it's the Doctor and he doesn't drop her, just holds her and keeps on running. He's too warm and the fabric of his coat wicks away the last of her protective mucus, leaving her dry and chapped, oozing out of her flattened tentacles. The TARDIS door slams behind them, the Doctor throws Freda onto the pilot's chair and takes off remarkably fast given how bad his piloting was last time…

She's drying out, and cold, and still in pain. But at least they got the plans. Maybe now she can…

"Oh, no, you're not dying on me." He whisks her off the seat again, sprays her hastily with a water bottle – where did he get a water bottle? – and carries her back to her room, scanning her with his sonic screwdriver as he walks. The room's already updated to provide the hermetic environment she needs to exist out of her casing: the Doctor slams the door shut behind him and drops her straight into the mucus tank for a soak.

"Right," he says, peering through the glass at her. "I've programmed the TARDIS to release some regenerative nanobots into that tank. They should fix your injuries. If they don't, just give me a shout. I need to go and make a new casing for you."

/\/\/\

Freda stays in her tank for the next three days, wallowing in mucus and self-pity. In retrospect, it was all her fault. If she'd seen the Dalek trap they'd never have raised the alarm, and the Doctor would never have got caught, and all because she wasn't willing to believe her own leaders when they said he was trustworthy. To make matters worse, she's all but mute without her casing: he comes by periodically to check in and talk to her, but all she can do is flap her tentacles in what she hopes he will read as an apologetic manner.

At the end of day three the Doctor comes to her room with a little smirk on his face and offers her an arm to clamber up out of her tank with. Freda sits on his shoulder, doing her best not to get her mucus on his hair, as he walks her through to the workshop, and shows her…

It's pink. Pink and glossy, with the studs painted in white, capped off with a bright pink fabric rose between the two headlights. Freda stares, swivelling her eye from it to him and back again.

"I wasn't entirely sure about the colour, but you seemed to like the ribbon," he says, as he gently lifts her from his shoulder and makes a platter with his hands for her to crawl into the casing with. "If you'd like a paint job, just call me. Any time. I can do one right now, if pink's not your thing after all. I find pink to be a very divisive colour, though I've never quite understood why."

Freda crawls into the new casing, testing everything out. He must have got a schematic from somewhere, because it's all comfortingly familiar… if maybe somewhat _pinker_ than before.

"I can change the LEDs, too," the Doctor says. "It just seemed a shame. You never see the outside of it yourself, do you?"

Plunger control. Exterminator control (although it's now labelled 'sonic control'; Freda isn't sure she approves). Door control; the casing slides smoothly shut. Ah, and here it is. Voice control.

"THANK YOU, DOC-TOR."

"You're quite welcome," he says, and smiles. "Now, after I've dropped these schematics off with your leaders, how about we go somewhere a little less rainy this time?"


End file.
